In Abundance

Because of its frenzied cycles of demolition and rebuilding, Brussels has been at the forefront of reimagining the role of the architect – from pure designer to master of salvage. It’s one hopeful outcome in a city where every site is a ghost story

Africa’s secondhand clothing markets provide millions of consumers with upcycled and customised garments. Compared to Western fast-fashion, this circular model offers a blueprint for achieving more with less. Could the circular economy be the continent’s competitive advantage?

The harmful ecological impacts of AI make it an unlikely companion when it comes to composting modernity. As the human and AI co-authors of this piece ask, what if an ethical large language model could help us develop something more fertile?

The dawn of infinite clean energy is beckoning, but we still have the problem of finite matter. What if energy ‘too cheap to meter’ means that we can finally close material loops, even for the mother of all problems: plastics

This manual provides a practical set of guidelines, precepts and pieces of advice for designing with abundance

The ‘abundance agenda’ shouts ‘build, baby, build’, but a country like the UK has enough vacant dwellings to solve its housing crisis – and no carbon budget for a construction frenzy. Rather than simply cutting red tape, we must reimagine what housing is

A new book, Radical Abundance: How to Win a Green Democratic Future, argues that we are missing some of the tools to achieve a green and just transition. It aims to be a practical guide for popular movements to regain their agency. One of the co-authors, Kai Heron, tells us how abundance can be achieved through Public Commons Partnerships, council farms and the battle for Seven Sisters Market in London

As well as publishing and curating, Future Observatory funds design research projects at different scales across the UK. From the Portfolio brings together a group of objects emerging from our funding portfolio which respond to the theme of the issue